Infendo Radio inspires feature articles
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 7:54pm by Blake
As long-time Infendo Radio listeners have come to know, Scott, Kyle, and myself are no fans of lengthy video game names, especially ones with silly subtitles. I began to notice their increase with each subsequent podcast, which regularly profiles the news game releases.
The result got me thinking, the thinking got me pitching, and the pitching landed a commission from Crispy Gamer to write an article. Unfortunately, Nintendo didn’t comment, but I’m happy with the turnout, nonetheless. Here’s an excerpt:
In the second week of November 2007, publishers released an unprecedented number of multiplatform videogames at the height of holiday shopping. Interestingly, more than half of the listed games employed subtitles in their titling, via the use of colons. This represents a far cry from the use of subtitles 10 years ago, which stood at just 30 percent of games. Continue reading…
Ironically, Nintendo may have released the most absurd name ever in, “Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3″ — a most awesome game with a most unnecessary name. But what do you think, does video game subtitling annoy ad nauseum?
March 18th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I think most of it is just publishers trying to distance themselves from the normal numbering for sequels. However in the case of the mario advance games, there was still numbers, and it was confusing as to which game was which.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Meh on the issue. Nice write-up, though.
March 19th, 2008 at 4:57 am
It really depends on the game for me. I am tired of seeing them everywhere as sometime you juust don’t know what order the games came out in or whats the point of a certain games subtile. But sometimes in a game like GTA the subtitles let you know what part of the series the game is in. All of the one between 3 and 4 were in the same period and effect of the other games. There was great continuity between them in different forms and you could jump in to their game from any of them.
March 19th, 2008 at 11:03 am
As usual, nice article Blake. With regard to the Super Mario Advance games, good lord, that has always bugged me. Who could have come up with that!?
March 19th, 2008 at 11:18 am
The thing that really bugged me about the Mario advance games is that on the SNES, they could fit Super Mario World, The lost levels, and the 3 NES Super Mario Bros on one cart, but they mysteriously forgot how to do that when the GBA rolled around…
March 19th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I think they are trying to use sub titles to make their games sound more important than they really are, like english nobles.
“Lord Mario the 4th presents to you: Super Mario lord of fungal land’s adventure numero thrice, long live the plummer.”
March 20th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Well, how would you tell which version of a game you want otherwise??
I think the most troublesome issue is what all this subtitling represents: games come out for every single possible platform these days, even when it doesn’t make sense, so publishers need to show that, while you are playing that certain release of a game, the experience is going to be markedly different on the DS than it is on the PS3! They are, in fact, completely different games, often created by different developers.
Look what happened to Final Fantasy: “III” became “II” in the U.S. (or wasn’t released at all in the U.S.? I can’t keep track! See what I mean??), “VI” was the third or fourth FF in the U.S. but it came out with a “VI” anyway (Or was that “VII”? Here we go again…) There is less confusion with subtitles, but you need two layers of them, one to cover the sequence and another one to cover the platform!
March 21st, 2008 at 3:27 am
@InvisibleMan: Final Fantasy I and II were released in the US as I and II. Final Fantasy VI was released in the US as III. Final Fantasy I, II, IV, V, and VI were eventually released under their appropriate names. And, Final Fantasy III finally made it to the US for the first time on the DS.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I didn’t find this as interesting as I was hoping. You didn’t yell or anything. It was, like, a real piece of journalism. What happened to crappy reporting and pure b.s., childish rants?
Jeez Blake, stop trying to be an adult or something.
(Sorry if this double posts, it just timed out)